Category: weight loss surgery

Weird Stomach Day: Part 2: The Squeakual

Well that sucked out loud.

I had fun outside while grilling up my one hamburger. Then I came inside and started eating. I got maybe a third of the way through it when I started feeling queasy and stopped. A few minutes later that one third of a burger came back for another visit.

Shit. Now what do I do?

I set a 15 minute timer. When that runs out I will reassess. Today might be a tough day. It might be a protein bar only kinda day. It’s been months since I’ve had a day like this. Here’s hoping they continue to get rarer and rarer.

Gastric bypass is most definitely not a short cut around weight loss. Definitely, definitively not a short cut.

Weird Stomach Day

It’s been a long time since I have had a bad stomach day that couldn’t be chalked up to some clear mistake I made while eating. It happened off and on yesterday. Sometimes I get a minor stomach ache that turns out to be caused by my tiny little redesigned stomach just being empty. I eat something and it goes away. That happened once or twice yesterday, but by dinner time it wasn’t empty anymore but it was still aching.

In the end I chalked it up to gas. At bedtime I was worried it would keep me awake, but I was optimistic it would pass by morning. I was wrong on both counts. I slept okay but it’s almost 1:00pm and I am still really gassy. Not debilitatingly gassy, but enough to feel a little uncomfortable.

Have I been doing anything different over the last few days? I changed my go-to drink two days ago. I had been drinking Chrystal Light lemonade, but I switched to the grape flavor stuff (I forget which brand) I had been drinking for years and years. I’ve never had a problem with it before, is that the problem now? I doubt it, but I switched back to the lemonade. We’ll see.

I am hungry though, so I think I am going to try to have that hamburger that I really wanted yesterday but couldn’t have because of the rain. I’m sure I will let you know how it goes.

Stressing

I am stressing out in a major way today. I’m in the office again (like every Wednesday) and I have meetings on top of meetings on top of meetings and even have to building hop for a couple of them. I’m sitting in the cafe trying to sneak in some lunch before the next meeting and I think I tried to eat too fast. My stomach is protesting a little. Hopefully I stopped in time or else I am going to have a really bad afternoon.

Wish me luck!

Natural Caffeine Alternatives

I was a teenager when my taste buds and I first fell head over heels in love with Coca~Cola. Thus began my lifelong dependency on caffeine. That ended at one of my first weight loss clinic appointments when the dietician told me that one of the costs of the surgery was never having caffeine again. Despite my addiction, I was okay with that. Maybe because of my addiction. I was more than ready to put an end to caffeine.

Here we are, a year and a half and one gastric bypass surgery later, and I am working in the office today. I am in a conference room with two other staff members. One of them is drinking a diet coke and for the first time I am finding myself gazing longingly at the can. What the hell, Robert? I thought we’d moved beyond this.

I’ve also been finding myself getting really sleepy in the afternoons. It’s just the sort of things that a little caffeinated beverage would go a long way toward helping. Nope. We’re not going down that road again. My caffeinated days are 100% over.

It did start me wondering about natural caffeine alternatives. Is there anything that is reasonably healthy and gastric bypass friendly that I could use as a replacement? The first article I hit on had a couple of things that might be worth looking into. What is Carob? It’s a chocolate substitute? Interesting. There is a link to a carob bark recipe that uses some weird berry I’ve never heard of. I wonder if I could replace the berries with peanuts?

One thing the article listed will not be going into my diet today or ever. Cordyceps. First of all… mushrooms? Eh, no. Second, I saw The Last of Us and cordyceps literally* brought on the end of the world so keep them the hell away from me!

I have also brought this up in a post to one of the bariatric surgery facebook groups. Sometimes I get a ton of responses when I ask questions there. Sometimes I get nothing. I expect to get nothing this time, but it was worth a try.

I will keep digging around and see if I can find anything interesting. I’ll let you know.

*Cordyceps literally brought about the end of the world in a fictional story. Would it be then more correct for me to have said Cordyceps fictionally brought about the end of the world? Ah, grammar.

Month 14 Weigh In

Happy 4th of July! You know what happens around here on the 4th of each month? It’s weigh in day! Boy are we going in the wrong direction now!

They told me I would level off. They told me after I level off I would start creeping back up. Last month was a clear leveling off. Today is a clear creeping back up. I’ve gone from 205.4 to 213.0. I’m up 7.6 pounds. I am very much happy with that. My BMI is up to 25.9 so I guess I am officially overweight again.

I knew I was going to be up this month. Not just because that’s how it goes, but because I have clearly been eating more and more at each meal, and equally important, more and more between each meal. I told the surgeon that last week and she said, paraphrasing, yup that’s good. So even with a significant jump in the wrong direction I am still somehow on track.

So that’s the story at month number 14. Until month number 15, happy weight loss and stuff.

Rough Night

It started a little after 4:00. Migraine. Shit. Usually my vision goes weird, then the headache comes a little while later. Today it was the other way around. The headache hit out of nowhere and it was bad. Then my vision went all screwy.

After about an hour and a half my vision was okay but the headache was hanging on. Not nearly as bad as it was at the start, but it was lingering. Jen made chicken in the air fryer for dinner and it was fabulous. Unfortunately I had one bite too many and the foamies hit. Worse than that? It’s been two hours and my stomach still feels blocked up. I have another 15 grams of protein to go to hit today’s goal so I have to have something to eat.

One last annoying thing. I am friggin’ exhausted. Is it the couch to 5k’s fault? I don’t think so. I just don’t sleep enough and sometimes it catches up with me and kicks my ass. Yippee.

Tomorrow is going to suck out loud. It’s an in-the-office day and I have meetings almost all day. Worse, I am running all of those meetings. I hate when that happens. Before work though I will need to watch the series premier of Marvel’s Secret Invasion. I’ll also have to play some guitar. I have four songs leftover from May that need rhythm guitars. Only two are ready to go though. Hopefully I’ll be able to sneak one of them in before I have to pack up and get ready for the commute. That means I am going to have to get up early.

Yeah, tomorrow is going to be a tough one. Tonight has already been a tough one. It’s going to be the old one-two punch of suck.

Wish me luck.

13th Month Weigh In

I’m sure my army of loyal readers (reader) has been missing my weekly weigh in posts and pining away for the next monthly weigh in. Well, it’s June 4th. Surgery was 13 months ago today. What’s the news?

The news is that I am up, but only a tiny bit. I think it’s safe to say that I am holding steady. On May the 4th I was at 204.8 pounds. This morning I was 205.4. A gain of 0.6 pounds. Let’s round it off at half a pound for colloquialism’s sake (wait, is that even a thing?).

The total weight lost since the surgery is 226 pounds and the total since the first weigh in is 246.6 pounds. My BMI is holding at 25, which technically means I am overweight, but it’s close enough to normal weight for me.

Over the last month I never updated my spreadsheet or the health app on my iPhone, but I did step on the scale a few times. Today’s weigh in is the lowest of the few, but only by a fraction of a pound. I never topped 207. I think I can say that I am holding my ground at this point. I have definitely been eating more, especially at lunch time and after dinner. I’ve cut back on protein supplements a little bit but I’d like to cut back more if I can. I want to eat real food more often.

Okay then, the weigh in is complete. We’ll talk again on July 4th and celebrate US Independence with a monthly weigh in. Until then, stay tuned for more cat pictures. Good day.

Always Learning New Things

It’s been almost a year and a month since my Gastric Bypass and I find I am still learning new things.

Yesterday I learned that melted-to-the-point-of-liquified protein bars are icky-gross. Today I learned that Atkins brand, keto-friendly BBQ fake potato chips are super duper spicy, and not being able to take a drink of water for an hour after you finish eating makes eating super duper spicy fake potato chips rather uncomfortable.

18 minutes to go before I can wash the spicy down. Hang in there, bypass boy.

12 < 15

Idiot.

I took a swig of lemonade at 11:42am, just as my last meeting in Foxborough was wrapping up. I left the building, went to the car, and started driving to my next meeting in Westwood. I took a little protein snack out of the package and took a bite at 11:54am.

What’s wrong with this picture?

I am supposed to wait 15 minutes after drinking something before eating something. 11:54 – 11:42 = 12 minutes. 12 is less than 15. Like our elementary school teachers taught us, 12<15.

Idiot. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t wait the full 15 minutes. Stupid. I won’t have anything more until after 1:00pm, so my stomach should be good and empty by then. Still… it’s called a clock, moron. Use it.